Get smart curated videos delivered to your inbox.   SUBSCRIBE
The Kid Should See This

Making wire gears + the kinetic sculptures of Arthur Ganson

Watch more with these video collections:

We love gears. Steel gears, wooden gears, paper gears, unusually shaped gears… but we’d yet to see handmade wire gears. Enter Arthur Ganson and his kinetic sculptures, including the one above, Machine with Housefly.


Spirals, springs, handmade gears, and long thin wires give this Rube Goldberg-style machine some interesting rhythms and a fun final image.

Below, watch how Ganson bends gears. He writes:

The wire-bending tool was designed to simplify and standardize the bending process. Each new gear is catalogued and the tool settings are recorded. Thus, it is easy to duplicate or modify any wire gear. The second tool is a simple device for centering the gear and spot-welding the spokes. Tool and jig making has always been an integral and joyful part of my sculpture making process.


Watch more gear videos and more kinetic sculpture videos on this site.

h/t Makezine.

This Webby award-winning video collection exists to help teachers, librarians, and families spark kid wonder and curiosity. TKSST features smarter, more meaningful content than what's usually served up by YouTube's algorithms, and amplifies the creators who make that content.

Curated, kid-friendly, independently-published. Support this mission by becoming a sustaining member today.

🌈 Watch these videos next...

What is the Slinky Drop? Watch in slow motion…

Rion Nakaya

Three Gears are Possible

Rion Nakaya

Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest on the beach in San Francisco

Rion Nakaya

Theo Jansen’s Animaris Mulus Strandbeest

Rion Nakaya

The Writer, a drawing machine automaton by Pierre Jaquet-Droz

Rion Nakaya

The Wintergatan Marble Machine, music made from 2,000 marbles

Rion Nakaya

The Solar Do-Nothing Machine by Charles and Ray Eames

Rion Nakaya

The Slinky Machine: A hand-cranked, wooden Slinky escalator

Rion Nakaya

The Mephisto Spiral – Part magic trick, part optical illusion

Rion Nakaya